Published in the Daily Southtown, June 26, 2005
Hey, Dick, we don’t have death camps and gas chambers at Guantanamo Bay.
From what I’ve heard and read, that seems to be the prevailing sentiment in response to U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin’s remarks of June 14.
Anyone who defends the senator, well, they’ve gotta be a “pantywaist liberal.”
And anyone who actually may agree with Durbin, clearly we’re talking about America-hating, effete sissyboys who’d soil their drawers if dropped into a combat zone.
In a time of war, just don’t question our president.
We don’t turn fanatics into dish soap and lampshades, so everything is OK.
As if a conservative couldn’t take issue with the president on where the country stands on the dark art of interrogation and torture.
Many of the same folks berating Durbin wouldn’t utter a word if they understood why Colin Powell had raised the essential arguments echoed by Illinois’ senior senator that day.
One of the few Bush Administration leaders familiar with the business end of a rifle, Powell is a modern-day warrior who understands today’s battleground realities as well as the consequences of policies that can help or hurt our soldiers.
Durbin used those views, expressed in the senator’s full text in today’s Insight section, to underpin his own criticism of practices at Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib and elsewhere — a message ignored in a barrage of vitriol lobbed by critics, many of whom are ill-informed and purposely off point.
To ask whether the Geneva Conventions legally must apply to our terrorist prisoners — to even suggest Durbin made that specific point — betrays a lack of understanding of what’s really at issue.
To ask whether U.S. soldiers in the hands of terrorists would be treated to captivity under the Geneva Conventions is obtuse. We know they would not. Sadly, we know they likely would meet a horrible death — as has happened to Americans who’ve fallen into terrorist clutches in the past.
Regardless of whether international rules legally apply, does the United States have a moral obligation to follow them even when our enemies — morally perverted killers without a country — don’t? And, to echo Powell’s central point, do we have a practical reason, too?
There is much our nation can and should do to find and obliterate the terrorist threat. Eradicating a grave problem often requires aggressive tactics that infringe on individual liberties in the interest of the public good, whether rubbing out gangs and blight in your neighborhood or knocking down terrorist cells. Under some elements of the Patriot Act, we’ve rightly secured such tools. But torture, many experts say, isn’t an effective intelligence-gathering tactic.
So how far is too far?
How much of the American ideal are we willing to give up to ensure the country’s safety?
Consider the scene Durbin described in the following passage:
Numerous FBI agents who observed interrogations at Guantanamo Bay complained to their supervisors. In one e-mail that has been made public, an FBI agent complained that interrogators were using “torture techniques.” That phrase did not come from a reporter or politician. It came from an FBI agent describing what Americans were doing to these prisoners. …
Let me read to you what one FBI agent saw. And I quote from his report:
“On a couple of occasions, I entered interview rooms to find a detainee chained hand and foot in a fetal position to the floor, with no chair, food or water. Most times they urinated or defecated on themselves, and had been left there for 18–24 hours or more. On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold. … On another occasion, the (air conditioner) had been turned off, making the temperature in the unventilated room well over 100 degrees. The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his hair out throughout the night. …”
Can we accept this as an “American” moment?
Such a sight pales against the scale of atrocity in the Nazi Holocaust, in the Soviet gulags, in Pol Pot’s Cambodia. This passage easily could describe scenes in other nations today — Saudi Arabia, North Korea, Yemen, Syria, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Rwanda, to name a few. Yet this scene from Guantanamo Bay is not out of place alongside the world’s collected works of government persecution.
Is there such a thing as a little bit of evil?
Should we not be better than this?
Sen. John McCain — a personal hero of mine, who also has said the question of what’s happening at Guantanamo Bay must be resolved — suggested Durbin read Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago.
I’ve read this, as well as many other works inspired by atrocity. I’ve known Holocaust survivors and Nazi hunters — even an accused death camp guard.
But even McCain’s criticism does not void this question: Should we not hold ourselves and our leaders to the highest standard?
We cannot imagine Americans doing horrific things.
Neither could the Germans.
Such is the banality of evil.
The Holocaust required the participation and acquiescence of regular people: police officers, train engineers, shopkeepers, rank-and-file soldiers.
Germans understand this. That shame remains a blot on their nation’s soul.
Durbin went on to say: “If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime — Pol Pot or others — that had no concern for human beings.”
Indeed, many would, because we simply cannot imagine Americans doing such things.
The men guarding and interrogating prisoners at our camps are doing what their government expects of them. They are not monsters. To suggest Durbin directly likened them to Nazis is a shameful distortion.
Politically, Durbin erred in uttering such an attention-grabbing contrast, this reference to Nazis, the 20th century’s most heinous manifestation of mass evil, the virtual third rail of untouchable metaphors. But he rarely lets pass an opportunity to seek attention.
And in touching that rail, the senator gave the Rush Limbaugh crowd the red meat they crave. They seized it and flogged away until the larger truth of Durbin’s speech was obscured in a political blood frenzy.
This debate should not be about “politics.” It should be about the integrity of the American ideal and what we expect of our government.
Regardless of one’s political party or point of view on the detention, interrogation and torture of terrorists, the full scope of Durbin’s remarks offered an excellent opportunity for Americans to understand this moment in our history and how we’ve reached it.
But the chance was thwarted by a neo-conservative frenzy, abetted by an accommodating media that likes the sound bite and loves to see politicians twist.
I find few reasons to agree with Durbin in general. Personally, the terrorists on that island can grow old and rot until the day they die.
But I don’t think Durbin said anything that required an apology.
I believe that still.
It’s disappointing, but not entirely surprising, Durbin later turned tail on the Senate floor.
The message should have been heard and understood for what it was because this debate needs to take place.
To keep America safe, has this president endangered the idea of what it means to be American?
Should we not be better than this?